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Pretty picture: Mimas scuttles behind Dione
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/12 06:36 CST
Images from the Cassini spacecraft's flyby of Dione.
First-ever high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Enceladus
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/01 07:22 CST
On the November 6, 2011 flyby of Enceladus -- the third such flyby in just a few weeks -- the Cassini mission elected to take a SAR swath instead of using the optical instruments for once. So here it is: the first-ever SAR swath on Enceladus. In fact, the only other places we've ever done SAR imaging are Earth, the Moon, Venus, Iapetus, and Titan.
Saturnlit moon, sunlit fountains
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/07 06:00 CDT
Saturnlit moon, sunlit fountains
Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/10/03 11:55 CDT
Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting
Tethys and Dione don't seem to be active after all
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/23 01:09 CDT
Tethys and Dione don't seem to be active after all
New Horizons workshop, day 1: Chemistry & climate on Pluto & other cold places
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/30 11:27 CDT
Today and tomorrow I'm attending the New Horizons Workshop on Icy Surface Processes. The first day was all about the composition of the surface and atmosphere of Pluto, Charon, Triton, and other distant places.
Pretty picture: five moons for Cassini
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/08/03 09:57 CDT
Explaining how to combine the red, green and blue images from a recent Cassini image session containing five of Saturn's moons: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea.
Cassini animations: Rhea and Dione and Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/06/28 04:12 CDT
I've been mucking about in the Cassini data archives (as I often do when procrastinating) and unearthed a neat, if short, mutual event sequence of two crescent moons passing by each other.
Cassini finally catches Helene
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/06/20 04:41 CDT
Cassini finally catches Helene
Lots of great stuff in the latest Cassini data release
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/13 04:56 CDT
I've got some lovely pictures from Saturn to show you! Every three months, the Cassini mission dumps gigabytes worth of precious Saturn data into the Planetary Data System, and the latest gift came on April 1. This particular pile of data, which was taken between April 1 and June 30, 2010, contains a lot of really terrific moon observations.
365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: What's up in the second quarter of 2011
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/07 11:16 CDT
Regular readers of this blog will find the content of today's 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast familiar, because it's an update on what the solar system exploration spacecraft are up to, based on my monthly "what's up" updates.
LPSC 2011: Sponge-moon Hyperion
Posted by Mike Malaska on 2011/03/23 02:51 CDT
Saturn's moon Hyperion has a bizarre sponge-like appearance that is in dramatic contrast to other heavily cratered bodies in the solar system.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/22 04:40 CDT
Last week, Zibi Turtle and Jason Perry and a dozen other coauthors published a paper in Science discussing evidence for rain on Titan.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/17 06:15 CDT
As I wait for the MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion webcast to start, I thought I'd fiddle with some images to point out that Mercury is a bridge between the scales of planets and the scales of moons.
LPSC 2011: Day 4: Ted Stryk on icy moons and The Moon
Posted by Ted Stryk on 2011/03/17 11:22 CDT
Here are Ted Stryk's notes from the sessions he attended in the afternoon of Thursday, March 10, at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
The curse of living on a geologically active planet
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/14 02:07 CDT
As the disaster of the magnitude 8.9 Sendai quake of Friday, March 11, at 05:46:23 UTC continues to unfold in Japan, I have been unable to tear my attention away.
LPSC 2011: Wanted: Pioneer 10 & 11 digital data
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/11 01:39 CST
This is both a Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) update and a public service announcement. Ted Stryk has been working for years to locate the original Pioneer 10 and 11 image data from the Jupiter and Saturn encounters.
Two fine color Cassini animations: Prometheus rotating, Tethys and Dione dancing
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/20 11:23 CST
Daniel Macháček has reached into the dark side of Prometheus and pulled out an incredible amount of detail where the potato-shaped moon is illuminated by Saturnshine. He produced an animation that morphs among the three sets of four-filter color images that Cassini snapped during the flyby.
Goodies from the January 11 Rhea flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/12 10:44 CST
Cassini got some incredibly tricky shots during its January 11 Rhea flyby!
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